Catalan vs Spanish: 300 Words That Are Nearly Identical

Catalan vs Spanish: 300 Words That Are Nearly Identical: the list

Tips

• Watch for the dropped final vowel: many Spanish words ending in -o or -e lose it in Catalan, as in momento → moment, tanto → tant, and gente → gent. Once you notice this, guessing the Catalan spelling from the Spanish one gets much faster.
• Spanish -dre often becomes Catalan -re: padre → pare and madre → mare follow the same shift, so if you know one pair you can predict the other.
• Spanish b and Catalan v sometimes swap in the same word, as in haber → haver. It is a small change, but it is easy to write the Spanish spelling out of habit, so double-check words spelled with b in Spanish.
• Some pairs change more than the ending: menos → menys and semana → setmana. Say these out loud a few times so the extra letters feel natural rather than like typos.
• Do not assume gender or number carries over: Catalan diners (money) is plural where Spanish dinero is singular, and the pair listed here is Catalan amiga next to Spanish amigo. Check gender and number separately from spelling.
• Bank the free wins first — ser, saber, seguir, cada, cosa, vida, hora, forma, manera, and persona are written the same in both languages — then spend your study time on the pairs that actually differ.

Frequently asked questions

How similar are Catalan and Spanish, really?

Very similar across a lot of everyday vocabulary. Words such as ser (to be), saber (to know), and persona (person) are written identically in both languages, while others like pare/padre (father) or haver/haber (to have) differ by only a letter or two.

If I already know Spanish, can I skip studying these words?

You can move through them faster, but it is still worth practising each one. Small differences like moment vs momento or sempre vs siempre are easy to mix up under pressure, and typing them out with spaced repetition helps the exact Catalan spelling stick.

Are there false friends I should watch out for between Catalan and Spanish?

The pairs on this page all share the same English meaning, so they work as safe reference points. Elsewhere, though, the two languages do have words that look alike but mean different things, so confirm the meaning instead of assuming a familiar-looking word behaves as it does in Spanish.

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